Promise Keepers Comeback

May
21, 2001

Promise Keepers Organization Still Draws
Crowds

By GUSTAV NIEBUHR

APID CITY, S.D., May 20 -- After listening to several
hours of religious music and messages, 3,200 men got onto their
knees on Saturday in a downtown arena, a place where Elvis once
entertained. They had been asked to pray silently, for freedom from
temptations like anger and pornography.

"We need a release of the Holy Spirit to set guys free from
bondage," said Steve Farrar, head of Texas ministry, who stood on a
stage.

It was a moment that, in its way, recalled a vastly larger and
more public event four years earlier, on the Mall in Washington,
when several hundred thousand men spent a day singing hymns and
prostrating themselves in prayer, at the invitation of the
evangelical men's organization the Promise Keepers -- the same group
running this event at the far more modest Rushmore Plaza Civic
Center.

In October 1997, when the Washington event took place, Promise
Keepers had become nationally known and controversial, pictured on
the covers of news magazines and a topic for talk shows. The group
was alternately praised for its emphasis on men's moral rejuvenation
and criticized for its events' exclusion of women and for some
speakers' telling men to be leaders in church and at home.

Despite its success, Promise Keepers stumbled financially soon
thereafter. Revenues declined, after a decision (since abandoned) to
stop charging people to attend. The staff was briefly laid off in
1998. Regrouping followed, but the organization seemed largely off
the public radar.

Still, it forged ahead. It has continued to run two-day
conferences, although on a smaller budget (about $34 million this
year, versus $117 in 1997), with a smaller staff (about 100,
compared with more than 300 at its peak) and in smaller venues. In
2000, its events attracted about 300,000 men, compared with more
than one million in 1996, their peak year for conferences.

As it enters its 11th year, Promise Keepers appears to be making
a transition from mass movement to a more institutional form, a
familiar trajectory in Christianity.

"We've continued to do the events," Bill McCartney, the former
University of Colorado football coach who is the group's founder and
president, said in a telephone interview. "It's just that not as
many men attend the events as in the time of exponential growth," he
added. "Actually, no one was as surprised as us that they came
together in those numbers."

Still, Mr. McCartney said, Promise Keepers remains unique. "We
believe we still have a very important role to play," Mr. McCartney
said, adding that the organization was also working to involve and
aid church pastors.

James Mathisen, a professor of sociology at Wheaton College, in
Wheaton, Ill., said, "They grew so big so quickly, there was no way
they were going to persist at that same rate."

"In one way," said Mr. Mathisen, who has studied the group over
the years, "they were victims of their own success."

Promise Keepers plans 16 two-day events this year, the first June
8 and 9 in Jacksonville, Fla., as well as one for teenagers, in
Columbus, Ohio, in December. In something of an experiment, the
group decided to hold two one-day gatherings in the lightly
populated Northern Plains -- in Grand Forks, N.D., in April, and on
Saturday in Rapid City, a tourist spot known for monumental
sculpture (at Mount Rushmore) and mammoth motorcycle rallies (at
nearby Sturgis).

Here the organization has tapped a ready market.

One man at the arena, the Rev. Dale Bartscher, 46, said he had
attended Promise Keepers' events since 1992. Mr. Bartscher, the
pastor of First Christian Church here, said his congregation had set
a goal of bringing 100 men to the event, and exceeded that by
18.

The topics discussed by speakers, like the importance of prayer
and the evil of Internet pornography, made it seem odd to recall
that Promise Keepers once excited so much controversy. The events
are still aimed at men, but at least on Saturday, little seemed to
be said about sex roles, once the group's most contentious issue.

Mr. Farrar, interviewed backstage, remarked: "As Thoreau said, I
think a lot of men are living lives of quiet desperation. We're
looking for significance and meaning, and until we get hooked up
with our creator, we won't get significance."

The organization's current theme is "Turning the Tide," with a
reference to a biblical verse about personal transformation (Romans
12:2), and an exhortation to live "an extreme faith," a phrase one
official said was aimed at younger men, who have presumably been
bombarded with the popular culture's use of the word "extreme," as
in extreme sports.

As at the events in the 1990's, the men here appeared to be
mainly in their 30's, 40's and 50's. Registration figures indicated
that 7 of 10 were from South Dakota, although a few came from much
farther afield. Pat Meyer, 38, a member of the Christian
Motorcyclists Association, rode 15 hours from Superior, Wis.

When asked what he got from the events, Mr. Meyer said, "How to
be a better husband."

For years, Promise Keepers has preached a need for racial
reconciliation, although attendees have been largely white. Speakers
here included two Sioux men, for whom this region is home.

The event also drew several African-Americans, one of whom,
Robert Johnson, 25, worked as a volunteer, using a bullhorn to guide
people to a stack of box lunches, while trying to rouse them to
chant, "Praise the Lord!" Afterward, Mr. Johnson said he had
attended the rally in Washington in 1997, and handed out Bibles.

"Whatever I can do to be a blessing to God's people, and to
people who would like to know our father, I want to do," he
said.